sábado, diciembre 31, 2011

Rep. Steve King, an influential Republican congressman from western Iowa, has not endorsed a presidential candidate. But in the final sprint toward Tuesday’s caucuses, he is urging conservatives to stay away from Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

King is adamant that Paul’s “isolationist” views are a threat to the country.

“In these last few days, the public and especially the activists in Iowa need to understand what Ron Paul would do if he became commander-in-chief,” King says. ‘I don’t think some of the responsible caucus-goers, many of whom support him, understand what he means on [foreign policy] and what he would do as president, pulling us out of places around the world.”

As Iowans make their final decision, King worries that Paul’s popularity on fiscal issues could overshadow his “blind spot” on foreign policy. “Our presence around the globe has been paid for by a tremendous amount of blood and treasure,” he says. “We are the force for security around the globe. If we had a commander-in-chief who pulled back military operations and brought it all back to the United States, and took a position that we would not intervene in foreign conflicts and only if attacked on our shores, there would be a huge power vacuum.”

“That giant sucking sound would draw in the Chinese, the Russians, Hugo Chavez, and others up into our shores and into the Caribbean,” King says, speculating on a Paul administration. “To paint an image of what I think it looks like under a Ron Paul presidency, it would be Iranian nuclear missiles placed in Cuba and Katyusha rockets in Tijuana. Neither of those situations would bother Ron Paul and that’s a calamity, that’s catastrophic.” More >>

I’ve been arguing that the nature of US debt now is not, despite appearances, all that different from debt post-World War 2, when we pretty much entirely owed the money to ourselves. Now, of course, some of the money is owed to foreigners; but as I pointed out, America has large assets abroad, not too much less than its liabilities.

But wait, there’s more. American assets. often taking the form of foreign subsidiaries of US corporations, earn a higher rate of return than US liabilities — especially now, when there’s a lot of foreign money parked in Treasuries, but this was true even before the crisis. As a result, income from US-owned assets abroad — the blue line below — consistently exceeds payments on foreign-owned assets in the United States, the red line:

Again, if your image is that we’re deeply in hock to foreigners, that our extravagance has condemned us to a future of debt peonage, you’re wrong.

Almost $6.3 trillion was erased from global stock markets this year as the euro zone financial crisis reverberated across the world in the latter half of 2011, calling into question the future of the world’s largest currency bloc.

Global stock market capitalization dropped 12.1 percent to $45.7 trillion according to Bloomberg data, while the euro ended the year as the worst performing major currency after finally starting to succumb to the continent’s financial and economic woes in December.

The euro had proved resilient for much of the year – burning hedge funds that bet on a steeper decline – but on Friday touched a 10-year low against the Japanese yen, and is near lows against the dollar last touched a year ago.

“Investors were more optimistic at the start of the year, but as the year progressed they were forced to come to grips with the debt levels in the western world,” said Navtej Nandra, the international head of Morgan Stanley’s asset management arm.

The S&P 500 is flat this year while the FTSE 100 has only dropped 5.5 percent. But the Eurofirst 300 gauge of blue-chip European companies has lost 11 percent, led by the French and Italian exchanges. The MSCI Emerging Markets index has shed a fifth of its value despite strong growth in China and other emerging markets.

Not one, but two changes of command took place at the Army's highest level this past year. Gen. Martin Dempsey measured his time as the Army chief of staff in weeks rather than years before President Obama nominated him to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The transition in the service's top office proved to be a prominent example of the larger transition the Army experienced in 2011. Rather than surges, the Army is preparing for a major drawdown. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno talks about potential future operations in the Pacific almost as much as actual ongoing ones in the Middle East.

Plenty of challenges lie ahead for the Army in 2012. They include the shrinking defense budget; hopes for a reinvigorated acquisition system; settling on a camouflage pattern; and battling the traumatic brain injuries that continue to ravage the force. Full Story >>

Talking points of the left conjured up this year have been about as numerous as they have been wrong. Many of these talking points previously existed, but never before have they been used with such frequency, and never before have they received so much media attention.

First off, who better to call for higher taxes than a billionaire himself? Warren Buffett's claim that he was paying a lower tax rate than his secretary helped the left build a case for higher taxes. After all, even if the average person previously did not want taxes on anyone raised, Americans certainly do not want to be paying a higher rate than a billionaire is. Then came the analysis. As the center-left Brookings Institute showed, of the 237,000 millionaires filing taxes in 2009, only around 1,000 paid a smaller percentage in taxes than their secretaries (or a person earning the same salary as the average secretary). As it would later turn out, these people are the only ones on Buffett's radar. In a CNBC appearance, Buffett clarified his position, saying:

[M]y program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low - not just high incomes, not just some guy making $50 million playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million appearing on TV, his income won't change. But if they make a lot of money and they pay a very low tax rate, like me, it would be changed by a minimum tax that would only bring them up to what the other people pay.

Buffett then estimated that his plan would apply to only around 50,000 people, but as the Brookings Institute estimate showed, Buffett is far-off in his estimation.

New findings in Alzheimer's disease support longstanding notions of what doctors have preached for years. The studies look at associations, not causes, but they further scientists' pursuit of preventing the fatal brain disease.

It's no secret that healthy diet high in omega-3 fatty acids and rich in vitamins found in fruits and vegetables is good for your overall health and longevity.

In a study released this week in the journal Neurology, scientists associate these fish-rich diets and foods with high levels of vitamins B, C, D, and E nutrients with increased cognitive performance and decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, or "brain shrinkage."

People who consume diets high in trans fats, primarily found in fast foods, fried and frozen foods, were more likely to have brain shrinkage and lower scores on the thinking and memory tests than people with diets low in trans fats, the study found.

This is the first study using nutrient biomarkers in the blood to look at the effect of diet on memory, thinking skills and brain volume, researchers said. Similar diet studies in the past primarily depended on participants' memory recall and questionnaires.

“These results need to be confirmed, but obviously it is very exciting to think that people could potentially stop their brains from shrinking and keep them sharp by adjusting their diet,” said study author Gene Bowman, assistant professor of neurology at the Oregon Health and Science University, in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology. More >>

Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.

The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.

The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half at a neighboring site.

As furious debate over fracking continues in the United States, it is instructive to look at how a similar gas boom is unfolding for our neighbor to the north.

To a large extent, the same themes have emerged as Canada struggles to balance the economic benefits drilling has brought with the reports of water contamination and air pollution that have accompanied them.

The Canadian boom has differed in one regard: The western provinces' exuberant embrace of large-scale fracking offers a vision of what could happen elsewhere if governments clear away at least some of the regulatory hurdles to growth. More >>

“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Mr. Perry said in Clarinda, earning a loud round of enthusiastic applause.

Canada has scored a solid “A” for the second-best economic performance among G7 countries in 2011 from BMO Capital Markets, however the countries have been graded on a serious bell curve as much of the industrialized world suffered through a trying year.

With a score of 81.6 on BMO’s Economic Performance Indicator (EPI) index, Canada ranks behind only Germany at 89.2 among the G7 group of nations.

“Still, it was up just a tick [0.1 index points] from last year, which represented the lowest grade for Canada since 1994,” Doug Porter, deputy chief economist with BMO, said in a report.

The index is produced by subtracting inflation, jobless rates, budget deficits, current account deficits and credit ratings from a hypothetical perfect score of 100. Surpluses are treated as zero and the indicator knocks off three points for each notch a country is rated below AAA status by Standard & Poor’s.

Canada benefited from an improved budget deficit and lower unemployment, offset by higher inflation. Based on forecasts, BMO expects Canada’s score to improve slightly to 83.3 in 2012.

Elsewhere, the United States scored the second-worst of the G7 with a 71.7 due to pronounced joblessness and a high budget deficit.

Italy, not surprisingly, scored the worst of the G7, at 69.6 due largely to a series of credit downgrades on its debt.

Overall, the OECD scored a middling 76.3, while euroland came in at 76.7.

Canada’s second-place finish comes amid widespread weakness in North America and Europe, with investors and economists now setting their sights and hopes firmly on China and other emerging markets to drive growth in 2012.

China, seen as a key driver of growth in 2012, scored a relatively impressive 80.3.

Lowlights include Greece, with a staggering 11.6 as the struggling country was dinged 51 points on its credit rating while also tackling a 16.6% unemployment rate and a severe budget deficit.

Portugal (43), Spain (56.2) and Ireland (55.8) also fared poorly.

All-time, the best performer was Japan, posting a near-perfect score in 1988. Canada’s best showing in the past 40 years was 91.8 in 2007.

A delegation attended from the ruling communist party of North Korea, plus a cadre from the ultra-militant US Workers World Party.

The Third International Conference of the International Anti-Imperialist and Peoples Solidarity Coordinating Committee met in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from Nov. 27 to 29. The conference’s theme was “Imperialist Attack: Economic, Political, Cultural and Military Aggression and Occupation.” Special reference was made to imperialist aggression in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Cuba and the Democratic Peoples ­Republic of Korea.The international program opened with an outdoor rally of 20,000 militants organized by the Socialist Party of Bangladesh, a co-sponsor of the assembly. It was followed by a militant march through the capital city’s crowded streets.The 800 official delegates represented anti-imperialist forces from 24 countries. There was strong representation from South Asia, including from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Two women guerrilla fighters were sent from Nepal. The DPRK sent a delegation. Resistance organizations were represented from Middle Eastern and African countries, including Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco and Chad.Straight from Tahrir Square in Cairo, an Egyptian delegate gave greetings from the revolutionary people of Egypt. A representative from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militantly greeted the assembly. Additionally, representatives came from Europe, the United States and Canada.Manik Mukerjee, Secretary General of the IAPSCC, gave the keynote speech. He said, “Today we are witnessing … throughout the world, including in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, and even in the metropolitan capitalist countries and in the very citadel of imperialism, waves of people’s movements surging forth.”

Sara Flounders, a Workers World Party Secretariat member, who is on the ­IAPSCC’s executive committee, expressed solidarity with the conference at a time when people of the world are rising up. When she mentioned Occupy Wall Street, the “crowd roared.”

Sara Flounders’ party is neck deep in the Occupy movement, especially in centers such as New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

The mood of the gathering was optimistic. Participants definitely saw the tide of history surging their way. More >>

A May 24 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Frontline program quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying he’d never had any contact with Bradley Manning and that he had no information indicating that the former Army intelligence analyst was the source of the classified U.S. intelligence information released by WikiLeaks.

On December 19, Frontline posted this follow-up information, “New Evidence of Assange-Manning Link,” and came clean in acknowledging that the new evidence in the case casts the statements by Assange in serious doubt:

“In an interview last April with Frontline correspondent Martin Smith, Julian Assange flatly denied that he’d ever had any contact with Bradley Manning, the young Army private accused of leaking half a million classified documents to Assange’s WikiLeaks. Asked about the implication in online conversations apparently between Manning and ex-hacker Adrian Lamo that Manning had gone around WikiLeaks’ normal protocols and established a personal relationship with Assange, Assange was adamant, even suggesting that Manning might have been inflating himself to others by claiming a relationship that did not exist. ‘We don’t have sources that we know about. And I had never heard the name Bradley Manning before. I never heard the name Bradass87 before.’”

Manning had used the name “Bradass87” in online chats and bragged about engineering “possibly the largest data spillage in American history.”

The new evidence in the case, disclosed in Manning’s preliminary hearing, established a direct connection between Assange and Manning. Frontline noted that Army digital forensics contractor Mark Johnson, testifying in Manning’s pretrial hearing, “says that he found communications between Manning and a chat user named ‘Julian Assange’ on Manning’s personal computer and a phone number for Assange in Iceland…”

The evidence puts Manning and Assange “in a precarious legal position,” Frontline now acknowledges. In effect, the evidence demonstrates that they were engaged in what amounts to a conspiracy to steal classified information from U.S. Army computers. This is espionage.

As such, Assange may have been lying about his contact with Manning in order to avoid implicating himself in a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. The WikiLeaks founder, an Australian and convicted computer hacker, is facing deportation from Britain to Sweden on sex crimes charges. He could eventually face deportation to the U.S., if he is ever indicted by the Obama/Holder Justice Department.

Meanwhile, more statements from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul defending WikiLeaks, the recipient of the largest release of classified information in American history, are starting to get media attention. These appearances included:

On the Fox Business Network Paul said, “This whole notion that Assange, who’s an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren’t they jumping to a wild conclusion? This is media, isn’t it? I mean, why don’t we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”

On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives he said, “Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?”

Paul went on Twitter to declare that WikiLeaks was providing “truth.” More >>

Kyrgyzstan's new leader said Thursday it was "very dangerous" for his Central Asian nation to host a US military base at Bishkek airport and that it must become a fully civilian airport by 2014.

Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev said he told visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake that the annual users fee of $150 million which Washington paid was not worth the risks involved.

"Perhaps they may think that Almazbek Atambayev is doing this under pressure from Russia," said Atambayev, a former prime minister who was elected president of the turbulent nation near Afghanistan last month.

"This is not the case," he stressed. "We want to transform Manas into a fully civilian airport. And keeping a military base for $150 million is slightly dangerous. Not slightly, but very dangerous."

The ex-Soviet republic is the world's only nation to house both a Russian and a US military base, reflecting a recent rivalry between Moscow and Washington in the energy-rich region.

Kyrgyzstan had threatened in 2009 to shut the US base down with immediate effect, a move that followed a massive new loan agreement with Russia. More >>

Editor's note: Vali Nasr is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University and senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

(CNN) -- Iran has threatened that it will retaliate against the Obama administration's proposed new economic sanctions on Iran's oil exports by blocking the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. "If sanctions are adopted against Iranian oil," said Iran's Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz," the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes through daily.

To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada. And the U.S. Navy has responded, in the words of a spokeswoman: "Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."

This is a significant escalation of tension between the United States and Iran, and the start of a more dangerous phase in the West's attempt to curtail Iran's nuclear program.

The new sanctions are a response to last month's alarming report on Iran's nuclear intentions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Association. The Obama administration has ruled out military strikes to stop Iran's nuclear program in favor of tougher sanctions, which, once signed by the president, and if fully implemented, would sharply reduce Iran's oil revenue. The administration sees this added pressure on Iran's fragile economy as an effective alternative to military strikes. More >>

miércoles, diciembre 28, 2011

NYT/ By EILENE ZIMMERMAN/

It has been another tough year for many small businesses. One in four, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, believes the biggest problem is weak sales. No matter what other challenges they face, said William Dunkelberg, the federation’s chief economist, “the key to everything is cash coming in the front door.”

Inevitably there are businesses, like the Elizabeth Anne Bed & Breakfast in Crested Butte, Colo., that struggled. And inevitably, there are owners, like Kevin and Denise Reinert of Elizabeth Anne, who held on as long as they could. “We kept thinking we could turn it around,” Ms. Reinert said. “We rented out rooms until the day we moved out.”

Here are the stories of five small businesses that were not able to survive 2011. More >>

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

Some have asserted that the controversial measures would criminalize pages and blogs that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. In particular, this has concerned search engines like Google, which could face massive liability if some form of the bill passes, some say.

“Of course, restrictions of results provided by Internet search engines amount to just that: prior restraint of their free expression of future results. Google and others, under SOPA, are told what they can or can’t publish before they publish it. Kill. The. Bill,” conservative blogger Neil Stevens argued at RedState....

And silencing voices will rid the world of Islamophobia, right? **snerk**

At least five political prisoners are included among the more than 2,900 convicts released on the basis of a pardon announced by Cuba's Communist government last week, the opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said Tuesday.
Commission spokesman Elizardo Sanchez told Efe that he has confirmed the release of two additional political prisoners following Monday's freeing of Carlos Martinez Ballester, Yordani Martinez Carvajal and Walfrido Rodriguez Piloto.
The latest to be let out of jail are Iran Gonzalez Torna, who since 1990 has been serving a 25-year sentence for piracy, and Augusto Guerra Marquez, jailed for 10 years in 1996 for assault on authority.
The commission said previously that Martinez Carvajal and Rodriguez Piloto were sentenced for taking part in a public protest, while Martinez Ballester served four years of a 15-year sentence for the crime of "revealing state security secrets."
The mother of Carlos Martinez Ballester, Pilar Ballester, told Efe that her son was freed Sunday and is now back with his family in Havana.
None of the official media or sources on the island has reported the release of prisoners taking place following President Raul Castro's announcement Friday before parliament that it would occur in the coming days.
"At least 66 Cubans are still doing time for political reasons" including 16 who are free on parole, the human rights commission said Tuesday.
The unofficial number of people benefited by the pardon up to now is around 2,920.
Castro said that a humanitarian pardon would be granted to more than 2,900 convicts.
He also announced that 86 foreigners from 25 countries would be freed on condition that their native countries accept their repatriation.
The measure responds to "established policy" as well as to the pleas of "families and religious institutions," Gen. Castro said.
Not to be included in the pardon, except for certain exceptions, are criminals in jail for crimes of espionage, terrorism, homicide, drug trafficking, rape and other sexual offenses, and armed robbery.
The commission estimates that in Cuba there are between 70,000 and 80,000 people behind bars.

Russia on Tuesday successfully test fired its long range ballistic missile RS-18 from its Baiknonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a new warhead aimed at overcoming Western air defence systems, news agencies said.

The RS-18, a warhorse missile known to the West as Stilet (Stileto) that the Russian defence ministry has given a new lease of life, successfully hit its target on the Kamchatka Pensinsula on the Pacific, the reports quoted the defence ministry as saying.

The RIA Novosti news agency said that the RS-18 missile was now carrying a new warhead aimed at overcoming missile defence systems at a time of growing tensions over plans for a US missile shield in Europe.

FrontPageMag/ By Bruce Bawer/

The other day the New York Times invited a few contributors to answer the question “Is America’s religious freedom under threat?” The answer provided by Salam Al-Marayati, head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), in an essay entitled “A Campaign Against Patriotic Muslims,” was a resounding yes – at least, that is, where his co-religionists are concerned. Among Al-Marayati’s assertions: “religious freedom for the Muslim American is under threat….Today’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is eerily similar to the pre-Nazi rhetoric against Jews….Hate against Muslim children in elementary and secondary schools is on the rise.” There is, insisted Al-Marayati, “an inquisition mentality toward America’s Muslims.”

People who have written books critical of Islam were described by Al-Marayati as “Muslim-haters” whose “work is reminiscent of the pre-Nazi propaganda…that regarded Judaism as a threat to Germany.” Al-Marayati railed about the controversy over the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim,” which, he sneered, “became a controversy because it did not include a terrorist.” America, he claimed, is being misled by those who, refusing to define American Islam by what he called its “mainstream,” insist rather on viewing it “through the lens of extremism.” “I love my faith and I love my country,” maintained Al-Marayati at the end of his piece. “The fact that some readers still question which country I am referring to indicates a serious level of distrust toward Muslim Americans.”

This isn’t the first time Al-Marayati has pleaded for American non-Muslims to reject “Muslim-haters” and recognize the compatibility of the Koran and the Constitution, Islamic law and Jeffersonian democracy. A couple of years ago he informed readers of the Huffington Post that “Islamic law has five goals accepted by all the scholars of Islam: securing and developing rights to life, expression, faith, family and property. That’s similar to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.” The concluding flourish of his Huff Po article was almost identical to that of his Times piece: “I am an American. I am a Muslim. I will work for a better future for all Americans and Muslims worldwide.” More »

Two part documentary series which explores accusations by CIA officials and western diplomats that Pakistan is failing to live up to its alliances in the war on terror.

In May this year, US Special Forces shot and killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Publicly Pakistan is one of America’s closest allies – yet every step of the operation was kept secret from it.

Filmed largely in Pakistan and Afghanistan, this two-part documentary series explores how a supposed ally stands accused by top CIA officers and Western diplomats of causing the deaths of thousands of coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

It is a charge denied by Pakistan’s military establishment, but the documentary makers meet serving Taliban commanders who describe the support they get from Pakistan in terms of weapons, training and a place to hide.

The second film in this timely and enthralling two-part documentary series reveals how Britain and America discovered compelling evidence that Pakistan was secretly helping the Taliban and concluded they had been double-crossed.

It tells the story of how under President Obama the US has waged a secret war against Pakistan. Taliban commanders tell the film makers that to this day Pakistan shelters and arms them, and helps them kill Western troops – indeed one recently captured suicide bomber alleges he was trained by Pakistani intelligence.

Abe Karem, inventor of the Predator drone, stands with the Albatross drone at Karem Air in Forest Lake, Calif. Karem built the Albatross in his garage. His work led to the invention of the Predator drone, used by military forces around the world.

Bret Hartman/For The Washington Post

The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force­ ­cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view. More >>

As former Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov looked out over a crowd of between 30,000 and 100,000 Russians (depending upon who was counting) on Christmas Eve in Moscow — just before calling for the ouster of Vladimir Putin — he saw a sea of tricolor black, white, and yellow flags before him, and a second sea of red flags.

The tricolor is the flag of the Russian Nazis, the skinheads who want to liquidate anyone who is not “Rooski” — the Russian word for “Russian” meaning white, Slavic, and Orthodox. Their poster boy is Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

The red flag represents the Communist Party, led by Gennady Zyuganov. Both men have sizeable contingents in the Russian parliament. Nemtsov doesn’t have a single seat, nor has he ever been allowed to place his name on the presidential ballot.

Nemtsov must have wondered why these two groups have played such a leading role in opposing Putin’s neo-Soviet dictatorship, rather than democratic-minded folks like himself. But he should know the answer, having probably recognized that his “organization” was incapable of accurately counting the members of the crowd, or of reporting with one voice in English why they were assembled or what they planned to achieve.

The crowd started booing Nemtsov.

Just days before the protest, tape recordings undoubtedly collected by operatives of the successor to the KGB — the FSB — had been played on a Kremlin-friendly TV network. The tapes revealed Nemtsov brutally criticized other members of the hodgepodge group that organized the protest, hurling all manner of personal abuse at them. The tapes were an obvious attempt to discredit Nemtsov among his peers.

Nemtsov’s comments about his peers were perfectly justified, even somewhat measured — I was thrilled to read them. Due to its pernicious infighting, the opposition to Putin has been unable to agree on an achievable agenda, a leader, or even a name for their group. Yet: the fact that Nemtsov needed to make them — and didn’t realize he was being recorded — tells you pretty much all you need to know about the prospects of this so-called movement.

Which is just as well, because if you relied on the reporting of the mainstream media for this information, you’d be out of luck. The mainstream reports on the demonstrations against electoral fraud in Putin’s Russia have been nauseatingly wrong.

Granted, it’s hard being a Russia correspondent. You spend most of your time frozen, worried about getting brutalized or murdered, hated by the local denizens (who are famous for xenophobia), and writing about a country most people couldn’t care less about. So when you get a whiff of a story that might thrust you onto the front pages, you’re pretty desperate to tell it.

I just returned from ten days in Cuba. It was a personal trip that offered a fascinating glimpse into one of the country’s great conundrums: how to balance people’s desire for greater economic freedom without compromising the country’s deeply-held socialist principles. My visit, as part of a group, was enabled by the “people-to-people” license program restarted last fall by the Obama Administration. (Such visits to the island-nation are designed to foster meaningful cultural exchange between U.S. citizens and Cubans. They were initiated during the Clinton years and suspended while Bush was in the White House.)

I was particularly intrigued to see how Cuba’s new property law that allows citizens and permanent residents to buy and sell real estate was playing out. Ushered in with much fanfare in November, this market-oriented reform is a major shift from a half-century of socialist, state-run housing policies.

What’s evident wherever you go in the country (and we traveled to five cities): The housing stock is aging and badly decaying. The 50-year trade embargo with the United States and the loss of the Soviet safety net in 1991 mean Cubans must make do with what they have or can make, notwithstanding the contributions from the few countries they maintain economic ties with. (Plywood and light bulbs are sorely needed, for example.) Still, the beauty of the neo-gothic, colonial architecture still comes through in many places, along with the peeling paint and crumbling walls.

Our personable and knowledgeable guide, Mirelys Gonzalez, is a typical Cuban home owner. She lives with her husband and five-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom flat, constructed on top of the Havana home she grew up in. The extreme housing shortage means that multi-generational living arrangements are quite common. It also means that divorcing couples are more apt to erect a wall within the home they have shared and continue to occupy the same property long after the marriage has ended. The reason for all this togetherness is that no one can be assured of finding a new affordable place to live. More >>

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Tuesday announced the reassignment of Vladislav Y. Surkov, the "gray cardinal" who has overseen Russia's domestic political scene for more than a decade. The reassignment, made in the midst of a new protest movement against Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's paramount leader, suggested that Mr. Putin is prepared to make changes in the tightly controlled system that emerged during his first and second presidential terms.

Mr. Surkov, the deputy head of the president's administration, is considered the architect of the system under Mr. Putin and his protégé and successor as president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, which Mr. Surkov christened "sovereign democracy." He will now oversee modernization and innovation as a deputy prime minister, but will take no role in domestic politics. Russia's political system has come under unprecedented pressure this month from protesters who complain that elections offer them no alternative to Mr. Putin's rigid model. Former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, who this month presented himself as a potential leader for disgruntled liberals, said the move affecting Mr. Surkov suggests "political reforms are going to continue."

"I consider him one of the designers of the system," Mr. Kudrin said in an interview with Kommersant-FM. "Now, the system is being reconsidered. Other organizers are needed, with other views on the political system."

Mr. Surkov, an advertising prodigy who was brought into government toward the end of the Yeltsin era, has argued for years that centralizing power in the Kremlin was a matter of survival after the 1990s. He acknowledged last year that "centralization has reached the limits of its capacity," but attempts to cultivate new parties were often discontinued if they showed signs of slipping out of Kremlin control.

Asked by a journalist on Tuesday why he was leaving, Mr. Surkov responded: "Stabilization devours its young." He went on to say that he had requested a reassignment. Asked whether he would take a role in settling down the protests, Mr. Surkov said no.

"I am too odious for this brave new world," he said, in a short interview with the Interfax news service. He then summed up his achievements at the reporter's request.

"I was among the people who helped President Yeltsin realize a peaceful transfer of power," he said. "I was among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system. I was among those who helped President Medvedev liberalize it." More >>

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